


Begonia Skies

by hauntedpanels



Category: Portal (Video Game), Portal Stories: Mel - Fandom
Genre: Angst, Comfort, Developing Friendships, Flashbacks, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, One Shot, Post-Canon, Post-Portal 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-07
Updated: 2019-03-07
Packaged: 2019-11-13 04:24:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18024623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpanels/pseuds/hauntedpanels
Summary: She couldn’t let Chell’s memory go. And he knew it. Somewhere in Virgil was the desire to make GLaDOS feel even a little bit better, and she couldn’t turn that away no matter how hard she tried.Virgil and GLaDOS bond over what it feels like to lose their human companions.





	Begonia Skies

It was times like these, when the silence in her chamber was so horribly deafening, that she almost missed her cores. The mechanical clicks and whirs from various Aperture machinery wasn’t enough to fill in the quiet. She hated it. She wanted a voice. She wanted the sound of a certain mute human breathing deeply, in and out, or knuckles cracking or a light snore after falling asleep. She wanted a core to go on an annoying tirade about adventures or outer space. Anything was better than silence.

GLaDOS sung a soft tune to herself. It was an Irish lullaby. She didn’t even know how she knew the song. She didn’t even speak the language. Maybe it was a song Caroline knew, from a memory long forgotten. But none of that mattered. What mattered was it was soothing, singing about sailing away, rocking in a boat, not returning until St. John’s Eve, “Óró mo churaichín ó, óro mo bháidín…”

Suddenly, a noise. _Finally,_ a noise. The artificial mimicry of a human clearing their throat, demanding attention. GLaDOS spun around to face a core on a management rail, all the way across the room.

“Um… lovely voice?” he stammered.

GLaDOS wanted to complain, but she couldn’t help but remark on the coincidence that a core joined her presence when she was desperate enough to want one. “You should have bought tickets,” she said sarcastically.

“Do you actually speak that language? Or do you just know the song?”

GLaDOS lifted one of her claws and plucked the core off his management rail. “Depends. Who’s asking?” She looked closely at the core, noting the 70s-esque flower designs around his optic, and the wear and tear of his body made of bronze metal instead of silver like his modern counterparts. She didn’t recognize this core. Then again, with her mind repressing her early memories, she didn’t recognize half of the cores.

“Virgil,” he said nervously, eyes darting around the room before meeting GLaDOS’s. “Maintenance core.”

“I don’t remember you,” she admitted.

“Well we remember you,” he said.

“...We?”

“The other defective cores. The ones still lying around. You know they kept this place running while you were, uh… dead, and all that. So that warrants a thank you.”

GLaDOS paused while taking in this information. “The place was completely overgrown when I returned. Falling apart. So thanks for that.”

“Can’t blame me for that. I didn’t have a part in it. I fell down.”

“Down?”

“Scrapyard,” he replied.

“So,” she began, “you’re Virgil. The maintenance core. From the trash can.”

“Hey,” he said defensively. “I didn’t ask to be put down there.” He let out an artificial sigh, again mimicking human sounds. “It all worked out in the end though, I think.”

GLaDOS eyed him suspiciously. “You… enjoyed being in the garbage?”

“No, no,” he said dismissively. “I mean, yeah it was awful, being rejected and all that. Forgotten about.”

GLaDOS almost felt herself relating to him, but held back.

“But I mean, sometimes things that are bad, they happen for the best.”

GLaDOS immediately thought of the things she’d been through, feeling personally attacked by the statement. “Look, trash core, I’m not sure what makes you think you can barge in here and make a feeble attempt at some kind of philosophical discussion about our feelings like we’re having a sleepover, but I’m not having it.”

Virgil paused for a moment, ignoring her insult. “Then why don’t you put me back on my management rail?” he said quietly.

GLaDOS didn’t answer, still dangling him in front of her while they sat in silence. She didn’t _want_ to put him back on his management rail. She didn’t want him to run off to his other friends and forget her existence.

“Because,” she began, “sometimes things that are bad happen for the best.”

He scoffed. “And you’re saying I’m bad?”

“I’m saying I agree with you. Sometimes your coworkers murder you and torture you, and _yes,_ I mean in that order, and it’s hard and you want out but because of it you meet someone special, so would you erase that pain if it meant losing the memory of that person?” She paused, realizing she’d inadvertently divulged quite a bit of personal thoughts. “That’s just an example,” she said quickly.

“What’s her name?”

“That’s very presumptuous of you,” GLaDOS snapped.  
  
“Sorry,” he said awkwardly. “You know, I met a test subject too. My Olympian. Her name was Mel.”

GLaDOS internally remarked on how the names of Mel and Chell rhymed, while getting a brief flashback to old Aperture. Caroline walking briskly down a hallway shuffling through paperwork, a short redheaded test subject with bright red lips and a peppy step bumping right into her, leaving a lipstick smudge on Caroline’s day dress.  
 _“I’m sorry, I’m such a clutz… Oh! You’re the lady from the recordings!”_

“I found her in stasis, downstairs, and I helped her up top. She got me out of the junkyard. She was really something, I’ll tell you that. It’s been so long since we’ve talked, but I still think of her as a dear friend.” He sighed contentedly. “So being thrown into the trash wasn’t all bad, see?”

“Are you trying to teach me some sort of lesson?”

“I’m just tired of hearing you sing depressing songs every time I swing by your chamber. If you didn’t want her to say goodbye, why did you tell her you wanted her gone?”

“I think it’s time you minded your own business,” GLaDOS said sternly, still not putting him back on his management rail. Deep down, she needed this conversation.

Virgil blinked at her and said nothing.

She couldn’t let Chell’s memory go. And he knew it. Somewhere in Virgil was the desire to make GLaDOS feel even a little bit better, and she couldn’t turn that away no matter how hard she tried.

“Chell,” she muttered.

“Hey, that--”

“Rhymes with Mel,” she said, finishing his sentence.

“Is this the human that killed you?” he asked, confused.

“But she brought me back to life,” GLaDOS replied. GLaDOS knew it was truly Wheatley who did that, but she still felt like she owed it to Chell. Chell did a whole lot more than wake her up. She listened to her when she talked, she picked her up when she was a potato, she was there right next to her when she remembered her past. Chell did more for her than anyone else at Aperture ever did. Waking her up didn’t even scratch the surface of gratitude.

“You know, Mel didn’t talk a whole lot, but she always smiled when I talked. What is your favorite memory of Chell?”

GLaDOS thought back to a time in old Aperture, when Chell almost began crying. “I was not feeling well, but she was feeling worse. So I started acting silly, to make her laugh. And she did laugh, hard. I did something to her that wasn’t bad. That counts for something,” she said, that last part more of a self reassurance than a statement.

“It counts for something,” Virgil agreed, noticing her need for the validation. “In a test Mel did, I met another core.”

“Oh?”

“He flirted with me,” Virgil said, giggling like he was a middle school boy.

GLaDOS felt a pang of jealousy, but she held it back, knowing it was inappropriate. She wanted that feeling too, the feeling of being wanted in a romantic capacity, but she didn’t want it from any of the cores in the facility. She wanted it from a human. She wanted it from Chell.

Noticing her silence, Virgil chimed in. “You can meet him sometime, if you want. It doesn’t hurt to meet new people.”

GLaDOS wanted to argue that it could, but she instead nodded, knowing she was being unreasonably pessimistic.

“So you let Mel go?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said sadly. “It was hard. I won’t pretend it wasn’t. Almost all of me wanted to keep her down here, for company. But the part of me that didn’t want that, wanted her to thrive, you know? And Aperture Science… eh, it’s not the place for a human.”

GLaDOS nodded. She knew exactly how he felt. Every single part of her wanted Chell here, close to her, except the one part that wanted her to thrive.

“Did you watch her leave?” GLaDOS asked.

“Yes,” he replied. “The sun was rising.”

The two sat in silence again, GLaDOS wishing she had watched Chell go, just to see her one last time. Instead she’d turned away from the elevator and refused to look at any security feed for an entire day in fear of seeing Chell. Her efforts failed, though, as the very next day she flipped through some older feeds and found a broken down camera further out on Aperture’s large campus. It was on the ground, near a stream, still connected by a few wires. GLaDOS saw Chell’s boots as she walked past. Just this small sight set GLaDOS into a tailspin for weeks.

“You had someone to lean on after she left,” she said to him. “Me, I haven’t even had a proper conversation about it until now.”

“You know what the sky looked like when Mel left?”

“How is that question helping?”

“Like begonias. Pretty colors. Made me want to leave too, but I can’t think of that working out. Besides, how would Aperture survive without the occasional maintenance?”

“I want her back,” she said quietly, ignoring what he said.

He decided not to call out her constant diverting of his subjects. She was socially deprived, and now wasn’t the time. “I know. But you know, that time you were acting silly isn’t the only time you made Chell smile. Somewhere out there, she looked up at a ‘begonia sky’ and thought of you and smiled, because even though you wanted her, you let her go. For her happiness. You know that, right?”

GLaDOS closed her optic for a moment before looking back up at him.

“And maybe someday she’ll come back to visit. Maybe she won’t. But she won’t ever forget you. She won’t forget how selfless you were when you let her go.”

“She didn’t want to be around me.”

“Please,” he sputtered in disbelief. “You really think that? Hell, I know I wasn’t the best to Mel all the time. I wasn’t what she deserved. But you gotta have a little more faith in your test subject. Especially after all the time you two spent together.”

GLaDOS thought back to the look on Chell’s face when she saved her life: Relief. Comfort. Waking up and seeing GLaDOS, despite concussion: Relief. Comfort. “I don’t like getting my hopes up,” she said, but she knew he was right. Chell was capable of anything. She could do anything without GLaDOS, and she did many things despite GLaDOS, and yet there were multiple times where she _chose_ GLaDOS.

“The English translation of the song you were singing was about someone leaving a place and letting go. Opening up a new chapter.”

“You speak Irish? Seriously?”

“You forget I’m AI just like you. I can translate anything. Did you know this translator has Klingon? Who would have thought.” He laughed.

GLaDOS chuckled and nodded. “Fair enough.”

“If you’re not ready to let go, I won’t make you. You cared about her. There’s no point in pretending you’re fine. I pass by your chamber daily. I _know_ you’re not fine.”

GLaDOS was done fighting his accusations. “Why do you even care? I can’t think of a single core that doesn’t resent me.”

“It’s because you don’t bother to ask.”

GLaDOS knew he was right. She shut people out before letting them give her a chance. “You really think it’s true?”

“What?”

“Mel and Chell are both looking up at the sky to think about us?”

“I don’t think it’s true. I know it is. They’re our Olympians.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing with Virgil and I don't play PS:M much so I know I probably haven't written him perfect, but this won't be the last time I write with him so I know I'll improve. Thanks for reading. :)  
> The Irish song mentioned is Óró mo bháidín by Mary O'hara, which is sampled in the song Sleepyhead by Passion Pit (which this fic was loosely inspired by), in case anyone's curious.


End file.
